Charter Gives Family 2 TVs After Contest Snafu

By Ben PopkenJuly 22, 2008

To the family that was supposed to win a 65-inch TV and got a 19-inch TV instead, Charter Cable has given them a 42-inch TV. And if you add up 19 and 42, you get 61. So if you combine the two tvs together, it’s almost like they got the prize they were promised. However, as commenter bigdirty points out, this is only 808 square inches of screen space, about half of the 1605 square inches they would get from a 65-incher. In any event, the family is happy. “You can see the sweat on the ballplayers on ESPN,” said Chris Lewis, one of several men dubbed “World’s Greatest Dad” by way of a Charter Cable-sponsored essay contest.

Oh but the 19″ + 42″ (assuming they are 16×9) only gives them 808 square inches of screen space as opposed to the 1805 square inches of a 65″ set – the family is still getting nowhere near what is promised!

They are getting less than half the promised screen real-estate. That would be like me promising to sell you a 100×100 (diagonal size ~141) meter plot of land, and then actually giving you the deeds to 2 plots of land, one of the 140×1 meter (diagonal size ~140), one of them 1×1 (diagonal size ~1.41) meter. And you were happy with it. Sure the diagonal sizes add up, but with the original deal, you were getting 10,000 square meters, and with the actual delivery, you are getting 141 square meters.

I’ve always thought that marketing and selling displays based only on diagonal screen sizes was a horrible way to do so. This is just one reason why. Uninformed people get so easily fooled by schemes like this.

It seemed to me that the company had explained that these people were actually runners up, not the grand prize winners, and that there was some confusion about that, but that there was a 65″ TV that went to someone else… So it sucks that they were expecting something better, but they didn’t actually win… If that is the case, they ought to be more than happy with the resolution they got. (In the earlier consumerist article, the comcast PR people said “In Charter’s East Division, which includes the state of Alabama, 10 19-inch HDTVs were awarded as honorable mention prizes. In the case of the Lewis family of Limestone County, Alabama, an honorable mention prize was intended to be awarded. The details presented to the family were about a 19-inch HDTV honorable mention prize, not the grand prize 65-inch HDTV. Regrettably, this was not clearly communicated.”)

Hmmm, according to that article, there might have been some kind of mixup. Initially they just got a phone call saying they had won the TV and some free cable service for a year.

When the contest winners were posted online June 12, Charter announced that it had decided to also name several honorable mention winners who would receive smaller televisions. This may have been what the marketing official meant to award to Whitney. However, no one is sure because he would not return telephone calls from Lewis or The News Courier.

It’s not entirely clear then if she actually won or if she was only mistakenly told she won when she actually only won a smaller prize.

How come no one has brought up the resolution issue? I’m sure the 19″ TV is only a 720p set, and the 42″ might be as well. That 65″ TV is most assuredly a 1080p set; so in addition to getting less diagonal inches and less square inches – I won’t do the math – they’re also getting less pixels.

As @DojiStar pointed out, the key point (which requires some diligence on the party of the reader to figure out) is that they didn’t win the grand prize. They won one of 10 previously unannounced honorable mention prizes:

In Charter’s East Division, which includes the state of Alabama, 10 19-inch HDTVs were awarded as honorable mention prizes. In the case of the Lewis family of Limestone County, Alabama, an honorable mention prize was intended to be awarded. The details presented to the family were about a 19-inch HDTV honorable mention prize, not the grand prize 65-inch HDTV. Regrettably, this was not clearly communicated.

So giving the family a 42″ TV is pretty generous. It’s like saying “Although we didn’t make a mistake, we feel bad about the miscommunication (read bad press) and we’ll make it right anyway.” I’m satisfied.

@Michael Belisle – If this is the case, why has Charter not identified who *was* supposed to receive the grand prize? In all of the discussion about this incident, that has never been mentioned.

As far as communication is concerned, the marketing person responsible for this has most definitely failed at clear communication. Failed to the point where no one can even speak with him now – he won’t respond to media inquiries at all.

I guess I must be one of the only Charter customers to love them. I’ve always gotten awesome CSR’s. I called them last week and presented them with an option – find me a cheaper package or (sadly lol) I would have to cancel my TV service (keeping the net and phone). Jennifer in the Vancouver, WA office totally ROCKS!! She asked me how much I needed to save a month and I was honest with her, telling her at least the cost of a tank of gas. Well thats approx $40 for my car and after about 3 minutes she came back with a $43 savings for me!

Now I know that the retentions dept is supposed to do just that … do what’s necessary to keep the customer. It’s the manner in which they do it is what makes my Charter experiences good. Even the local office is great to work with. Comcast could take lessons from the West Coast Division of Charter in my book.

I love how you phrased that like you thought you had discovered some kind of revolutionary concept, when raelly you just kinda suck at reading. The original consumerist article specifically says that the real winner was from Bristol, TN, and in the comment on that article it says his name was listed on the contest site as “Abe M.” So yes, they did reveal the true winner, and no it was not the family in this story.